The Reconstitution of The Left

One especially dangerous illusion in the left is to think that the enemy
of my enemy is always my friend. While the smallest level of dissent is
shocking to official commentators of America, those who call themselves
radical can still equally accept this society on an unconscious level.
It is a matter of being an opposition by definition, an opposition that
still speaks the language of the system.

What we are concerned with here is the appearance of a modern anarchist
ideology within the left. Anarchism by definition opposes all government
but this is the end of the agreed-on definition. Within the "anarchist
movement", many individuals are sincerely working for proletarian revolution.
Our critique is not aimed at denying the good these people do or even at
showing all their mistakes. It aims to show how accepting anarchist ideology
can negate their efforts.

Contrary to popular opinion, ideology is not original sin. It is
not something that everyone inevitably has a little of. It is phenomon
of capitalism; "ideas of power/ideas in the service of power". The spectacle,
society's total lie, rests on the balance of class power. While any kind
of distortion supports the spectacle, the system only propagates ideas
that play a definite role in its total lie. Just as with our critique of
marginalism, we aim to show the precise role that anarchism plays within
the spectacle's dialogue with itself.

The Left

When the unnamed commentators of Smile magazine [minnesota] complain that
"Bolshevism is the dominant notion of what it means to rebel against Authority",
they are looking to create a new "dominant notion" of rebellion without
actually rebelling. Smile's position is similar that of Michael Dukakis
when he asked people to abandon the concepts of "right" and "left". These
wishes, which echo the desire of many "neutral" political thinkers, come
from a desire to escape from history. By "escaping labels of rebellion
and redefining radicalism", those on the left now participating in politics
want to protect themselves from being associated with their predecessors,
from liberalism to Bolshevism.

Unfortunately for these rationalizers, the interests of the managerial
sector in escaping from its contemptible history as the left has not been
as strong as its interest in being united as the left. Leftists, from the
Communist Party to the welfare state liberals, have been the most "rational"
sector of the bourgeois, that sector most oriented toward state capitalism
(This makes it the most hated sector in the US also, since it is made the
representative of all the state capitalist innovations that are most visibly
repressive; from taxes to welfare).

Even in America, one of the most reactionary societies in the world,
this desire for anonymity is not sufficient to stand in the way of the
real common interest that unionists, social workers, graduate students
and priests have in coming together as the owners of the image of the transformation
of society. Even more, the left in the US has had enough solidarity with
total capitalist interests in the US to keep playing the game of punching
bag for the right; witness the campaign of Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale.

The left has many forms. Whether "radical" or "reformist", the unions
exemplify the leftists' role on a day to day basis. The association of
unions with the mafia is unfortunately quite natural, since both groups
are basically protection rackets. The unions function most of the time
as a labour brokerages, asking for more money only when the capitalist
market requires them to but always asking for dues. What separates the
unions from a simple scam is their ability to "represent" the workers.
When workers remain isolated within their cubicles and within their roles
as workers, the unions can appear to be expression of their "aspirations";
the desire for slight changes that is natural once people accept the total
misery of the system. This is most blatantly repressive when workers become
too militant to accept the demands of the market. It allows the unions
act to control these struggle and defuse any radical actions that workers
might take.

The protection system is equally present in social work, religion, or
"progressive" politics. Without needing any bad conscious, the leftist
stands up for the justice of the system. Consumers, Tax-payers or small
bussinesspeople are given a right to perform their function within society.
Each demand of the average reformer boils down to the right to `quality
television programing'" or the right to work.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is where leftism is perfected. Just as the medieval kings depended
on priest to justify the divine right of kings to rule, the capitalist
state needs ideologues to create a theology of the state to justify its
rule. Leftism is merely the ideology of one type of bureaucracy; those
which tend toward pure state capitalism.

While the left is a servant and justifier of the state, the lefts' rhetoric
is oriented toward change in society. This natural since many varieties
of leftism were formed as a way of a bureaucracy surviving changes in society.
The example lefts think of first of all is the Bolsheviks leading (and
destroying) the Russian revolution. However, the left appears as the manager
of working class militancy only during a crisis in society; on a day to
day level it depends on a role of sub-boss in society for it power.

In America, the domination of the ideology of free enterprise and democracy
is so complete that it gives the illusion that ideology created the state.
The real state of affair can be seen with the creation of the "official
state ideology" of Malaysia. This is a pseudo religion now openly being
created as an adjunct to the continuation of the Malaysia state.

The opposition between any two radical factions is more apparent than
real. Like competing capitalist firms, each grouping maneuvers to destroy
it's competitors while all factions unite to keep the "marketplace of ideas"
open.

The only practice open to extremist groups in the US is challenging
the groups above them in the hierarchy of the political legitimacy. Thus
each group implicitly tails after another group that is slightly more "main
stream". The Sparticus League tries to replace the SWP. The SWP tries to
take over the democratic party. While all the various Leninist groupings
are committed to have forums, discussions and exchanges of letter, on "Lessons
of The October Revolution" etc.. These efforts remain on an imbecilic level
since they are done only to recruit followers.

The association of radical groups, from the SWP (Socialist Workers Party)
to ACORN with main stream politicians would be as embarrassing to these
group as would an association of the Democratic Party with communism or
Noam Chomsky with the Communist Party USA. At the same time, all the leaders
of the various radical groups could easily fit with an average academic
cocktail party. The unity of all these groups is in their pathetic practice
and not on a united program. They are united as bureaucratic worms trying
to carve holes for themselves.

Leftist politics is supported by an impoverished specialization of activity,
with radicals and liberals feeding off each other in a mystified manner.
Like good children, "U.S. out of El Salvador" demos etc. primarily appeal
to "policy makers" in Washington while the more liberal of these policy
makers use zealous radicals as a vanguard on election day; radical groups
provide the man (or woman) power to register voters while corporations
provide the money. Today, it is not simply a matter of saying that the
nationalized medicine "is bolshevism in disguise" but that bolshevism has
become nothing but extreme nationalized medicine in disguise.

Leninism Versus Anarchism

Since Leftism thrives on a theology of statism, those who deal with the
various problems of the state in most abstract and controlling manner have
the highest place in this theology. Thus anarchism and Leninism have ideologically
dominated leftist debates. Anarchism posits an abstract end to an abstract
state while Leninism proposes the creation of an all-powerful state, a
state run on entirely abstract principles of power.

Naturally anarchism versus Leninism debates have gone on forever without
result, to the benefit of the specialists in ideology of each grouping.
Leninists present a theory for creating a society with dictatorial program
for getting to this communist society. Anarchism (at its best) presents
a desire for immediately creating a communist society but has no understanding
of how the present society could put this program into effect (It is not
any change in the debate but an actual movement of the real world, the
start of the conversion of China and The Soviet Union from state monopoly
capitalism to more a competitive capitalism, that has now left Leninism
looking more discredited now).

The various debates of Leninism and Anarchism, on violence, the state,
self-management etc., have defined all the entire dialogue within the left
since they boil down to nothing but a-historical, moral arguments that
can be repeated about any subject. "Will central control or autonomy solve
this problem", "Do the ends justify the means?", "Does heredity or environment
determine a persons' actions", "Can government improve peoples lives or
should they be left to their own devices", worthless arguments that appear
for any administer and which never have a general solution, just ideologies
to abstractly justify one choice.

While these two groupings have held a monopoly on the image of change
in this society, liberals have been limited to popularizing their theories
as a way of administering the present society; using cooperatives, unions,
welfare, and the forty hour work week etc., as ways to run capitalism more
smoothly.

The Reconstitution of the left.

The hope for mass amnesia shared by many on the left does show that the
left is moving toward a new form for itself, one better serving the present
crisis of capital. The ideologies now being created by anarchists, "neoliberals",
and deconstructionists are the latest reflections in ideology's house of
mirrors; the left once more reconstituting to defend the system by appearing
as its opposite (Like reconstituted soup, the left is could be thought
of as a powdered bureaucracy; add water to turn them into Stalinists, add
milk to turn them Anarchist etc).

Since 1917, the Left has been dominated by the governmental system that
triumphed in the Soviet Union. The Stalinist possessors of the absolute
state were naturally the most admired group among all would be bureaucrats.
Bureaucracy could show its "scientific inevitability" on a very crude level.
The communist parties the world over conceived themselves as the beneficiaries
of this inevitability.

At present, however, the obvious conversion of the Soviet Union to western
style capitalism has removed the basis for Stalinism's domination of the
left. Capitalist domination of the world has become more obvious as it
goes deeper into crisis. With the removal of the basis for the domination
of Stalinism, the left has had to find a further bag of tricks, suitable
to the present world of austerity and free trade. Stalinism is not being
removed but augmented. Anarchism is now appearing as Stalinism's loyal
opposition, just Stalinism is free market capitalism's loyal opposition.

The new brand of hypocrisy needed by the left is exemplified by Noam
Chomsky. Although Stalinism, in the form of third world nationalism, is
now an established way of developing capitalism in "third world" nations,
it is losing its ideological luster in America and Western Europe. So this
self-proclaimed "Anarchist sympathizer" is needed to defend various Stalinist
national liberation gangs around the world (Vietnamese government etc.).
Chomsky remains simply the most advanced of the partial truths defending
the total lie of capital. Chomsky has an unblemished record of documenting
each atrocity committed by western sympathizing governments while never
speculating about any cause other than the moral bankruptcy of American
Intellectuals (big story).

Today, from Trotskyism to Maoism, the doctrines of the party leading
the people magically to communism have a hollow ring. This has caused many
Leninist groups, such as Solidarity (Against The Current), The Revolutionary
Socialist League, the RCP and many others, to adopt an anarchist or "situationist"
veneer, to stay credible to the mass of leftists.

Revolutionary anarchists can see the opportunity to become a stronger
force by taking advantage of the chaos in Leninism and showing "why Leninism
is wrong and anarchism is right". Of course anarchism's understanding of
these groups is completely wrong; the Leninist leftist is not simply mistaken.
Instead his view point serves his interests, as a member of the educated
elite, perfectly; if the revolution succeeds he can gain a higher position
in the new bureaucracy regardless of whether the party does any real good
while his position as leader of a micro-group gives him enough arbitrary
power now satisfy his lust for sadomasochistic relationships, regardless
of the success of the revolution.

Just as much, anarchism misunderstands itself. Anarchism now has no
possibility of forming the type of mass organizations that once existed
in Spain or Italy. The reason for this is not even based on the betrayals
that anarchist ideology made (Spanish anarchists becoming part of the Spanish
Republican government etc.) but because more advanced means of social deception
have arisen since 1936. At present, anarchism in America is not a subsector
of the working class but a subsector of the marginal left.

Since it does not even see its position in the left, it can not prevent
its recruitment of generic leftists and the even more reformist use of
Anarchist ideology by these leftists. When anarchists think they are expanding
their appeal, they are actually moving more of leftism into anarchism.
Main stream anarchism has reached the point where its revolutionary theory
often reduces revolution to a purely moral question, one that does not
require any thinking besides the self-sacrificial attitude of upper-class
youth.

Anarchism becomes more and more important on the left as the left itself
weakens. As the bureaucratic class declines, it can no longer protect itself
with science, with the myth of its progress, but must instead uses morality,
the remnants of secular religion. It is hardly chance that main stream
protestant churches today are bastions of liberal social policy.

What we are actually looking at is not a increase in anarchism but a
transformation of the bureaucratic class. Moralizing serves its purposes
once the authority of science been has eroded. Anarchism can serve the
left perfectly but only once it is hammered into a shape that allows leftist
intellectuals to have an easier existence within it. A purely moral tone
are the tool that allows an appeal for social revolution to be transformed
into an appeal to attend the next demonstration. "Well you want to do something
don't you!"

Now that the possibilities for Leninist revolution in the first world
seem exhausted, the hardened leftist intellectual has as his first interest
the defense of third world "revolutions" (native bureaucrats taking power
away from American controlled despots). This is primarily a matter of unified
class interests, from Vietnam to Nicaragua, the bureaucrats of the third
world are part of the same petit-bourgeois "managerial" class that leftists
are primarily drawn from. This can be seen in the arguments that are used
by leftist to defend the sandinista revolution, "what would else could
the Sandinistas do, how else could they have organized a revolution".

Moralism is the rhetoric that allows anarchism to recruit the more confused
or emotional students (confusion is not used as an insult, since a confused
student is less explicit about his or her capitalist role). "Since there
is not a revolution, we must act now to improve the world" (by supporting
one set of bureaucrats that we calculate will be better than the existing
capitalists).

Anarchism replaces the scientific certainty of Marxism-Leninism with
a complete agnosticism about the outcome of any action. From Noam Chomsky
on the right to "Animal Rights", pacifist actions on the left, a purely
moral view point allowed leftist intellectual the possibility of dominating
through the metaphysic of what is right. In "affinity groups", spirituality
allows the calm of the upper to dominated the agitation of the working
class. The main effect is to dress up idiotic and reformist actions in
veneer of the "most radical possible actions".

The Philosophy of Confusion

The real shift taking place now is from one way of recuperating the desire
for change to another, from the romance of Leninism to the pacified self-satisfaction
of the "Green Party", "Animal liberation", "Anti-technology/Wildness" and
"Earth First". These reconstituted leftists need to reduce all questions
to "what can we do to make things better now". If you ask "who are 'we',
what do you mean by better, why only think in terms of now?", you get repression
(on a psychological or organizational level) rather than an answer.

As the left has moved to get more of its blessing from morality rather
than science, the artistic and philosophical movements have created an
ideology of confusion to supplement it. By increasing the reign of terror
within the intelligentsia, the most confused elements can effect a regrouping
of forces on the most base level, the moral level.

The cleverest radicals these days are trying to find a philosophical
basis for their radically incoherent practice. One obvious candidate for
kind of justification is the "deconstructionist movement". Deconstruction's
shape can be understood by looking at the situationists' failure in the
sixties. Just as present day unions present an aura of militancy while
making no mention of their past crushings of wild-cat strikes and autonomous
workers' actions, the present day artistic and philosophical movements
make pretenses of vague radicality while suppressing any awareness of the
actual radical action that has taken place on and against the artistic
plane.

The degeneration of culture and the spectacle is no longer a new story
for those who know how to look. It is especially evident to the artistic
milieu, the milieu that has most often read the works of the Situationist
International. If there is not a general discussion of this degeneration
it is because it in the interest of this milieu to make these conclusions
part their works and make them appear to be their insights. The artistic
milieu is able to do this because of the failure of the upheavals of the
sixties. The sixties did not reach a sufficiently revolutionary point to
be able to supersede the present culture and allowed the creators of culture
to cover-up the SI's critique of the artistic speciality.

The method of the SI involved a willingness to attack, to make show
the flesh and blood involved in normally bloodless academic musings. "To
bring the violence of hoodlums to the plain of ideas". The SI knew this
method could involve either going beyond the present expert control of
knowledge or making the realm of ideas more purely spectacular.

Deconstruction is naturally the tendency that has moved furthest into
the terrain of the purely spectacular. There are many who would argue against
rejecting a tendency until the entire depth of its possibilities have been
exhausted. The problem we have is that the domination of experts, one of
the strongest methods of authority in our society, is held up by the immense
volume of specialized information that is produced in our society (more
words are published in any academic field than one person could read, even
they read a page/a second, 24 hours a day). With this situation, a number
of incoherent tendencies can fortify their position simply by making very
difficult to know exactly what they are talking about.

Deconstruction/postmodernism is the product that this decade takes advantage
of this obscurity. It positions itself as the newest, most radical, and
the most profound thinking that has come up. Deconstruction only allows
itself to be approached on its own terms. This requires the earnest-while
critic to become a deconstructionist. The author of Against Deconstruction
describes how Derrida's On Grammatology begins with the assertion of the
primacy of written language over oral language. Not only is this assertion
absurd both in terms of history and terms of fullness of expression, it
is unnecessary for most of Derrida's further arguments. The assertion serves
mainly to soften up the reader. He knows that a series of specious assertions
will follow, he is clued in that this is not logic but a kind of theater
of radically. Assertions are best made with emphatic, quality, dismissing
all opposition. But it is also important to be vague about who the opposition
is.

Deconstruction is concerned with building a deeper swamp. We are thus
obligated to make "unfair" attacks on such confusionist movements. For
us, when a tendency uses the most idiotic tools to accomplish the most
reactionary aims it is sufficient to condemn it out of hand.

Just as capital has stagnated during the last ten years, the method
of recuperation have not managed to increase their stock in trade. The
present spokesmen of vague radicality (deconstructionism), turn the degeneration
of the spectacle into the spectacle of degeneration but can only recuperate
the most hack-kneed ideas, building up the dead-end of skepticism into
a dead-end of philosophy and a dead-end of radicalism. The fact that the
language of philosophy has become meaningless to todays thinkers, "that
they can only see it as a series of disproved systems" [paraphrasing Nietzsche],
is their only insight. This is paraded as a great triumph of insight (not
by these thinkers themselves but by their erst-while followers).

There can be no doubt that Baudrillard together with the entire "deconstructionist
movement" comes as a response to a current of actual radicality, most represented
by the Situationist International. It was revealed by the SI that the boundaries
of the current society have not yet fully been guarded, that ideas could
still threaten the foundation of even the academic section of capital.
To counter this, academics felt a need to create a kind of abstract radicality,
competing against the existing perceived radicalities. Hegal,Marx, and
Nitzschie are the most useful philosophers in the search for this implied
radicality.

By inverting Marx, Baudrillard can return to Hegal's perfection of philosophy;
everything that exists is justified by the falsity of the philosophy of
action. Once the market economy is proven to vanish, Baudrillard does nothing
but sell coffee-table books.

The important part of the movement is that it is not able to directly
recuperate the SI in same way they academic Marxists have recuperated Marxists,
allowing a "Marxism for everyone". SI is still too dangerous since it was
explicit about it's method. Baudrillard's search for a "political economy
of the sign" is a confused effort to rework Society Of The Spectacle without
the society. The capitalism can then create its own cryptic "situationationism".
If "A whole conception of a class strategy is conceived around the possession
of material and cultural goods", it is a matter of conceiving a strategy
for capitalists. It is well known that Baudrillard was concerned with escaping
the view of Marx from within the Marxist paradigm. Baudrillard develops
a way of blaming your "creator" for your own misery, a way of blaming Baudrillard's
Marxism on Marx.

To paraphrase Nietzschie to these Nietzschie fond "radicals", if in
N's time, "the world [had] become small" so that a free spirit had "to
stoup to get into" the house of philosophy, now the house of philosophy
has become too small for a free spirit to gain entrance at all.

The radical action of the poststructuralists, deconstructionist and
postmodernist is only radical if the world is excluded. It is radicality
utilized for the definition of a new specialty. The insights of philosophy
have been reworked with a fools cleverness to refer only to other branches
of philosophy. The poststructutalists give themselves away when they are
loudest in their claim to have created "a fundamentally new theory".

As celebrities, these philosophers are approaching the ironic nihilism
of modern painters or rock musicians who adopt an attitude of indifference
or contempt to whole of their publicity industry while they position themselves
to appear as the most advanced part (their publicity industry is the university
which produces mundane intellectuals who consume these "radical" theories).

The stars of the new milieu have even less excuse than those of the
old to claim an innocence to their activity and can hardly escape the fate
of the old world.